INTO THE
V.O.I.D.
A Studio Dialogue with Alexandre Bavard
FVTVRIST Magazine //
May 20, 2025
After the closing of V.O.I.D. exhibition at Galerie Au Roi in Paris, we caught up with Alexandre Bavard to reflect on the ideas and energies that lingered long after the lights went out. Created in collaboration with Arthur Hoffmann and curated by a-topos, the exhibition was a full-bodied environment.
In this conversation, we delve into the symbolic spine of V.O.I.D.—exploring how Alexandre builds meaning through absence, material, and myth. What emerges is a portrait of an artist navigating the fractures of the present with precision, urgency, and a language entirely his own.
Exhibition view, V.O.I.D. by Alexandre Bavard and Arthur Hoffmann.
Galerie Au Roi in Paris, 2025
Courtesy of the artist.
I'M DRAWN TO UNSTABLE ZONES—VACANT LOTS, INDUSTRIAL WASTELANDS, ABANDONED BUILDINGS. THESE ARE PLACES WHERE TIME FEELS SUSPENDED, WHERE THE PAST IS STILL VISIBLE AND THE FUTURE NOT YET ARRIVED. THEY EVOKE A KIND OF PRESENT-DAY ARCHAEOLOGY.
Your recent exhibition V.O.I.D. with Arthur Hoffmann feels more like a spatial proposition than a conventional exhibition. What interests you about co-authorship, and how does it reshape the architecture of a work?
V.O.I.D., curated by Atopos, was conceived as an immersive space—an ecosystem rather than a mere sequence of artworks. The installation of scaffolding in the venue became a kind of spine, a structure that was both architectural and symbolic. It drew from urban aesthetic codes deeply rooted in my gaze, especially those specific to the city of Paris. Scaffolding, in its essence, embodies transition—a threshold, a temporary architecture that materialises the idea of connection.
Working with Arthur Hoffmann allowed us to weave formal and conceptual dialogues between our practices without trying to merge them. Being a co-author means giving up total authority over the work in favour of a fertile space of friction, where ideas confront and transform one another. It's not about placing two works side by side, but about creating a third language. This experience confirmed for me that art can be generous—a space for building connections.
Non-places are at the heart of V.O.I.D. and of your broader practice. Do you see these transitional spaces as sites of erasure or of potential?
I'm drawn to unstable zones—vacant lots, industrial wastelands, abandoned buildings. These are places where time feels suspended, where the past is still visible and the future not yet arrived. They evoke a kind of present-day archaeology. My graffiti practice taught me how to read these landscapes, to inscribe signs within them, to capture their invisible ruins.
Such places remind me that everything is destined to disappear: neighbourhoods, architecture, entire civilizations. But within every collapse, there's a promise. In Beirut, I saw a wounded, fractured city—yet it was still alive. I realised that where there is destruction, there is also the possibility of renewal. These spaces are both sites of erasure and of potential—thresholds. A topology of passage, of cycles, of unstable memory.
In Syria, a month after I visited, I witnessed the regime of Bashar al-Assad begin to collapse, triggering a civil war that would last over a decade. That moment left a deep impression on me. It reminded me of the fragility of systems, the impermanence of the world, and it shaped both my mindset and my visual imagination. I’m drawn to such experiences, often violent ones , where collapse coexists with life and rebirth.
Arthur Hoffman, print on alluminium, 2025, Image courtesy of the artist.
The void is not only spatial. It's also psychological, social, and political. What kind of void are you trying to inhabit or confront right now?
I feel a generational void—an anxiety about the future. Many of my works resonate with this sense of an ending, a melancholy for a world fading away. Eco-anxiety, the rise of extremism, artificial intelligence, pandemics, war—all of it creates a suffocating atmosphere. I grew up watching science fiction films from the 1990s, and now I have the eerie feeling that those fictions have become reality.
Faced with this void, my work becomes a symbolic rampart. Art doesn't need to be reassuring. It can be disturbing, confrontational, even aggressive; it can raise questions that politics or institutions shy away from. Art is a space of sensitive resistance. I’m not trying to fill the void—but to inhabit it, to shape it, to create rituals and anticipations within it. The void then becomes an echo chamber for our collective anxieties—but also a catalyst for imagination.
Your work often returns to medieval and mythological codes—knights, relics, rituals—filtered through a distinctly urban and post-industrial lens. What draws you to these temporal collapses?
I don’t see time as a straight line, but as a loop. Temporal collapses interest me because they allow for the layering of epochs: a tag on an ancient column, a knight in armor dueling a riot cop. There’s a tension there that becomes fertile.
Mythologies, rituals, figures of bravery or rebellion—these obsess me. Even if they’re out of fashion in contemporary art, these codes still course through our bodies and imaginations. The 2023 BRAV exhibition at Tick Tack gallery in Antwerp played precisely with those analogies: the hero versus the system, the armor versus the uniform, myth versus control.
I think our era needs strong narratives—not necessarily to believe in, but to feel. I work like a time traveler, gathering fragments from the past to compose new realities. It’s an act of imagination, but also of memory.
I FEEL A GENERATIONAL VOID—AN ANXIETY ABOUT THE FUTURE. MANY OF MY WORKS RESONATE WITH THIS SENSE OF AN ENDING, A MELANCHOLY FOR A WORLD FADING AWAY. ECO-ANXIETY, THE RISE OF EXTREMISM, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, PANDEMICS, WAR—ALL OF IT CREATES A SUFFOCATING ATMOSPHERE.
Agora, Théâtre de Liège, Belgium , 2025.
Kunstverein Wagenhalle, Stuttgart, 2024.
What's next? What kinds of ruins, myths, or margins are calling to you now?
Right now, I’m very drawn to pre-Columbian civilizations—Mexico, the Andes. There’s a powerful iconographic force in those cultures, a deep connection between ritual, body, and cosmos that speaks to me. I’d love to go there—to feel the energy of the sites, to move in the rhythm of another continent.
Every journey is foundational for me. I never work only in the studio. I need to immerse myself first—to move, to feel, to capture invisible forces. It’s in those margins—geographical, temporal, mental—that my most vital projects take shape.
Finally, what is the question about your work that you wish people would ask, but never do?
Why ?
FIN